How To Install espeak on Debian 11

In this tutorial we learn how to install espeak on Debian 11. espeak is Multi-lingual software speech synthesizer

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install espeak on Debian 11.

What is espeak

espeak is:

eSpeak is a software speech synthesizer for English, and some other languages.

eSpeak produces good quality English speech. It uses a different synthesis method from other open source text to speech (TTS) engines, and sounds quite different. It’s perhaps not as natural or “smooth”, but some find the articulation clearer and easier to listen to for long periods.

It can run as a command line program to speak text from a file or from stdin.

  • Includes different Voices, whose characteristics can be altered.
  • Can produce speech output as a WAV file.
  • Can translate text to phoneme codes, so it could be adapted as a front end for another speech synthesis engine.
  • Potential for other languages. More than 40 languages are included.
  • Compact size. The program and its data total about 350 kbytes.
  • Written in C++.

There are three methods to install espeak on Debian 11. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.

Install espeak Using apt-get

Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.

sudo apt-get update

After updating apt database, We can install espeak using apt-get by running the following command:

sudo apt-get -y install espeak

Install espeak Using apt

Update apt database with apt using the following command.

sudo apt update

After updating apt database, We can install espeak using apt by running the following command:

sudo apt -y install espeak

Install espeak Using aptitude

If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Debian. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.

sudo aptitude update

After updating apt database, We can install espeak using aptitude by running the following command:

sudo aptitude -y install espeak

How To Uninstall espeak on Debian 11

To uninstall only the espeak package we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get remove espeak

Uninstall espeak And Its Dependencies

To uninstall espeak and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Debian 11, we can use the command below:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove espeak

Remove espeak Configurations and Data

To remove espeak configuration and data from Debian 11 we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y purge espeak

Remove espeak configuration, data, and all of its dependencies

We can use the following command to remove espeak configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge espeak

Dependencies

espeak have the following dependencies:

References

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install espeak package on Debian 11 using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.